Endurance through adaptation: how agri-food policy resists reform in Austria, Germany, and Sweden

How does the agri-food policy core (i.e., production and farmer orientation) persist despite sustained pressure for green transformation? Drawing on the concept of policy endurance – the preservation of the ‘policy core’ through incumbents’ strategies of ideational, institutional, and policy adaptation – we analyse agri-food policy dynamics in Austria, Germany, and Sweden. In each country, Green parties, the most likely challengers to the policy core, held government office for several years between 2014 and 2025, a period in which the European Green Deal and the Farm to Fork strategy generated pressure for change. Combining Manifesto Project data on party positions with qualitative analysis of policy documents, ministerial statements, and stakeholder assessments, we trace these three forms of strategic adaptation. We find that incumbent parties deploy such strategies to preserve the policy core. However, we challenge the argument that Green parties consistently act as challengers: in Sweden, the Greens actively endorsed the core-conforming National Food Strategy. These findings suggest that the incumbent-challenger distinction is more fluid than existing frameworks contend, that policy endurance can operate through rather than despite the absorption of reformist ideas, and that coalition politics shapes policy endurance in multiparty governments.